22 June 2010

M2M World Cup report 2

Welcome to our second weekly look at the World Cup viewing figures, please find attached the spreadsheet with the numbers for all the games over the last 7 days.

As we enter the third week of the competition, finally, amid the numerous controversies surrounding ambush marketing scandals, transport worries, unfilled stadia that sound like a hive of killer bees, dreadful football being blamed on a dreadful football, the French and of course ITV in general, an international football tournament appears to have eventually broken out. Shame that both Robbie Earle and Nicolas Anelka will have to watch most of it from at home!

Overall viewing

In viewing terms, things have seemed to settle down across the week and there is definitely a consistent pattern emerging throughout the group stages. Midweek, the early matches at 12:30 receive between approximately 1.3 million to 2million total viewers, the afternoon games at 15:00 between 2 and 2.5 million total viewers, and the peak matches at 19:30 between 6 and 6.75 million viewers.

At the weekend, the earlier daytime games increase their total viewing, as the 12:30 game averages 2.5 million and the 15:00 match receives on average 3.5 million viewers. For the peak games however, whilst Sunday remained consistent with the midweek games, Saturday’s viewing actually dropped to 4.7 million total viewers. This is likely due to it being the first evening match not to feature a big European or South American team, as Denmark dumped Cameroon out of the tournament 2-1. Other factors for the drop in viewing could also be more folk going out on Saturday night, or that many people around the country had been put off by the previous night’s game.

Demographically, for every match other than the England game, the male/female split has been on average around two thirds male and one third female. In terms of ABC1 viewing for the male audience, there is an interesting trend for the midweek matches, where during the day, the percentage of upmarket viewers ranges between 34-40%, whereas for the peak games, this percentage increases to between 44-50%. At the weekend, this upmarket share of viewing in peak remains approximately the same, but for the weekend daytime matches shows an increase from the midweek games to between 40-45%.

England vs. Algeria

As for the England vs. Algeria game, on Friday night it averaged 17.7 million viewers during the game itself (again the spreadsheet contains the entire programme) and peaked at 21.3 million at the final whistle, which is an increase of 800,000 average viewers from the USA match and an increase of 1.3 million in-home viewers at the final whistle. Whether this was down to an actual increase in total viewers, or whether it was simply that less people went to the pub, will be an interesting statistic to find out once the pub viewing figures come in after the tournament. As England’s next (and possibly final) match is on a Wednesday afternoon, these viewing figures are likely to be markedly different, and we’ll update you on those at the end of the week.

As for demographics, the upmarket share of audience on Friday night was similar to other peak matches, but the gender difference was not as great. Men only represented 55% of all viewing, as the share of female viewers increased from its usual 33% to 45%. Hopefully, the increase in female viewing wasn’t all to see this pretty face in action.

The World Cup viral

Of course, one aspect of this World Cup which will be more present than at any previous tournament is online viewing, and as this is probably the only highlight from the game on Friday, it’s worth noting that it has already clocked up over 313,000 views on You Tube.

This leads nicely onto World Cup advertising on YouTube and the rising influence of viral marketing which is another intriguing battle between official and “non-offical” advertisers surrounding the World Cup. The highest-profile battle over the past few tournaments has been between Adidas and Nike and Adidas’ approach this time is quite cool. The official World Cup partner, Adidas’ viral campaign for the World cup, has received roughly the same amount for one video (see below) as Rooney’s outburst. It is part of the Adidas channel on YouTube (and also has a dedicated Facebook site), featuring Zinedine Zidane as the narrator and showcases all the key players from each competing team at the World Cup and is far better (in my opinion) than either the Star Wars parody Adidas have on TV at the moment or Nike’s “Write the Future” campaign. It gives the Adidas campaign a much more underground feel and differentiates itself from the pretentious Nike ad, which is a reversal of what has gone on previously. It will be interesting to see if it pays off.

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M2M World Cup report 2

Welcome to our second weekly look at the World Cup viewing figures, please find attached the spreadsheet with the numbers for all the games over the last 7 days.

As we enter the third week of the competition, finally, amid the numerous controversies surrounding ambush marketing scandals, transport worries, unfilled stadia that sound like a hive of killer bees, dreadful football being blamed on a dreadful football, the French and of course ITV in general, an international football tournament appears to have eventually broken out. Shame that both Robbie Earle and Nicolas Anelka will have to watch most of it from at home!

Overall viewing

In viewing terms, things have seemed to settle down across the week and there is definitely a consistent pattern emerging throughout the group stages. Midweek, the early matches at 12:30 receive between approximately 1.3 million to 2million total viewers, the afternoon games at 15:00 between 2 and 2.5 million total viewers, and the peak matches at 19:30 between 6 and 6.75 million viewers.

At the weekend, the earlier daytime games increase their total viewing, as the 12:30 game averages 2.5 million and the 15:00 match receives on average 3.5 million viewers. For the peak games however, whilst Sunday remained consistent with the midweek games, Saturday’s viewing actually dropped to 4.7 million total viewers. This is likely due to it being the first evening match not to feature a big European or South American team, as Denmark dumped Cameroon out of the tournament 2-1. Other factors for the drop in viewing could also be more folk going out on Saturday night, or that many people around the country had been put off by the previous night’s game.

Demographically, for every match other than the England game, the male/female split has been on average around two thirds male and one third female. In terms of ABC1 viewing for the male audience, there is an interesting trend for the midweek matches, where during the day, the percentage of upmarket viewers ranges between 34-40%, whereas for the peak games, this percentage increases to between 44-50%. At the weekend, this upmarket share of viewing in peak remains approximately the same, but for the weekend daytime matches shows an increase from the midweek games to between 40-45%.

England vs. Algeria

As for the England vs. Algeria game, on Friday night it averaged 17.7 million viewers during the game itself (again the spreadsheet contains the entire programme) and peaked at 21.3 million at the final whistle, which is an increase of 800,000 average viewers from the USA match and an increase of 1.3 million in-home viewers at the final whistle. Whether this was down to an actual increase in total viewers, or whether it was simply that less people went to the pub, will be an interesting statistic to find out once the pub viewing figures come in after the tournament. As England’s next (and possibly final) match is on a Wednesday afternoon, these viewing figures are likely to be markedly different, and we’ll update you on those at the end of the week.

As for demographics, the upmarket share of audience on Friday night was similar to other peak matches, but the gender difference was not as great. Men only represented 55% of all viewing, as the share of female viewers increased from its usual 33% to 45%. Hopefully, the increase in female viewing wasn’t all to see this pretty face in action.

The World Cup viral

Of course, one aspect of this World Cup which will be more present than at any previous tournament is online viewing, and as this is probably the only highlight from the game on Friday, it’s worth noting that it has already clocked up over 313,000 views on You Tube.

This leads nicely onto World Cup advertising on YouTube and the rising influence of viral marketing which is another intriguing battle between official and “non-offical” advertisers surrounding the World Cup. The highest-profile battle over the past few tournaments has been between Adidas and Nike and Adidas’ approach this time is quite cool. The official World Cup partner, Adidas’ viral campaign for the World cup, has received roughly the same amount for one video (see below) as Rooney’s outburst. It is part of the Adidas channel on YouTube (and also has a dedicated Facebook site), featuring Zinedine Zidane as the narrator and showcases all the key players from each competing team at the World Cup and is far better (in my opinion) than either the Star Wars parody Adidas have on TV at the moment or Nike’s “Write the Future” campaign. It gives the Adidas campaign a much more underground feel and differentiates itself from the pretentious Nike ad, which is a reversal of what has gone on previously. It will be interesting to see if it pays off.